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F R O M T H E PA G E S O F

Wednesday October 14, 2009 Midnight in New York Nine pages © 2009 The New York Times

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pay czar wants Health Bill Wins One Republican Vote a.i.g. to reduce promised bonuses The federal pay czar is trying to force the American International Group to reduce $198 million in bonuses promised to employees of the financial unit whose problems posed a threat to the global financial system last year. But the Treasury’s special master for compensation, Kenneth Feinberg, is running into legal hurdles because those bonuses fall outside new rules against bonus payments at companies receiving government assistance. The bonus agreements at issue were struck before last year’s emergency rescues by the Treasury and the Federal Reserve. The problem is a recurring one. A.I.G. payments early this year to the same employees elicited public outrage, though government officials said then that they had little legal authority to rescind the contracts. To strengthen his hand, Feinberg is threatening to reduce the compensation packages he does control, according to a person close to the discussions. That could mean shrinking the pay of other A.I.G. executives — including its new chief, Robert Benmosche — if the company does not claw back part of the bonuses for the people in its trading unit, known as A.I.G. Financial Products. At companies that received extraordinary government support, Feinberg’s task is to monitor and enforce rules governing new pay packages. He can approve or reject cash pay that exceeds $500,000 for top executives. After A.I.G. paid $165 million in bonuses to the Financial Products group in March, it promised to try to recover much of the money to quell the uproar. But it has recovered only $19 million of the $45 million it asked the recipients to repay, according to a new audit of A.I.G.’s compensation program and government’s oversight. MARY WILLIAMS WALSH

WASHINGTON — After months of relentless courting and suspense, Sen. Olympia J. Snowe, the Maine Republican, cast her vote with Democrats on Tuesday as the Senate Finance Committee approved legislation to remake the health care system and provide coverage to millions of the uninsured. With Snowe’s support, the committee approved the $829 billion measure by a vote of 14 to 9, with all the other Republicans opposed. “Is this bill all that I would want?” Snowe asked. “Far from it. Is it all that it can be? No. But when history calls, history calls. I happen to think that the consequences of inaction dictate the urgency of Congress taking every opportunity to demonstrate its capacity to solve the monumental issues of our time.” Snowe’s remarks riveted colleagues and thrilled the White House. President Obama had sought her vote, hoping that she would break with Republican leaders and provide at least a veneer of bipartisanship to the bill. Obama described the commit-

tee’s action as “a critical milestone” and declared, “We are now closer than ever before to passing health reform.” But he added: “Now is not the time to pat ourselves on the back. Now is not the time to offer ourselves congratulations. Now is the time to dig in and work even harder to get this done.” The Finance Committee was the fifth and final Congressional panel to approve a sweeping health care bill. The legislation still faces significant hurdles. Aside from Snowe, no Republicans have endorsed the bills. Pressure from lobbyists is sure to grow in coming weeks. And many more lawmakers will get involved in what promise to be impassioned and highly politicized debates on the floor of the Senate and the House. After the Finance Committee vote, the chief architect of the bill, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the chairman of the committee, declared: “It’s clear that health care reform will pass this year. Our action today provides terrific momentum.” But Sen. Charles E. Grassley

of Iowa, the senior Republican on the committee, said the bill put the nation on “a slippery slope toward more and more government control of health care.” The Congressional Budget Office said the bill would cost $829 billion over 10 years. The costs include $345 billion for the expansion of Medicaid and $461 billion for subsidies to help lower-income people buy insurance. The budget office said the costs would be completely offset by new fees and taxes and by cutbacks in Medicare, so federal budget deficits in the next 10 years would be $81 billion lower than now projected. But Douglas W. Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office, said his agency had not estimated the impact of the bill on overall national health spending, public and private, and could not say whether it would “bend the cost curve,” as Obama and lawmakers want. Likewise, Elmendorf said he did not know for sure how the bill would affect premiums. ROBERT PEAR and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

Biden No Longer a Lone Voice on Afghanistan WASHINGTON — From the moment he took office, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has been President Obama’s in-house pessimist on the war in Afghanistan, the strongest voice against further escalation of U.S. forces. It was a role that may have been lonely at first, but has attracted more company inside the White House as Obama rethinks the strategy he unveiled just seven months ago. For Biden, the role represents an evolution in his own thinking, a shift from his days as a liberal hawk advocating loudly for U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. Year by year, the story of Biden’s disenchantment with the Afghan government, and by extension with the engagement there, mirrors America’s slow but steady turn against the war. “He came to question some

of the assumptions and began asking questions about whether there might be other approaches that might get you as good or better results at lower cost,” said Richard N. Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, who has been consulted by Biden on the matter. Biden’s approach would reject the additional troops sought by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal and leave the U.S. force in Afghanistan roughly the same, 68,000. Rather than emphasize protecting the population, he would accelerate training of Afghan forces to take over the fight while hunting Al Qaeda in Pakistan using drones and special forces. He does not favor abandoning Afghanistan, but his view has caught on with many liberals. “The vice president is asking great questions and he under-

stands this issue very, very deeply,” said Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, Biden’s successor as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. “He’s been there many times. Beyond Biden’s strategic concerns, some who participated in administration deliberations this year said he was keenly aware that the country, and particularly his party’s liberal base, was growing tired of the war and might not accept many more years of extensive U.S. commitment. While officials anticipate that Obama will fall somewhere between the vice president’s position and his commanding general’s request for as many as 40,000 more troops, they agree that Biden has been a forceful presence in shaping the choices — not entirely unlike his predecessor, Dick Cheney. PETER BAKER

International

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Guinea Boasts of a Big Infrastructure Deal DAKAR, Senegal — Guinea’s military government, facing international sanctions and heavy strictures over a mass killing of unarmed demonstrators, is highlighting a recent agreement with a Chinese company that could provide it with billions of dollars. Mamadi Kallo, the military junta’s secretary of state in charge of public works, confirmed Tuesday that the deal had been in the works for months, but he said it was signed only over the weekend, well after the civilian killings and rapes on Sept. 28. China has yet to confirm the deal, leading some analysts to suggest that the Guinean government was trying to bolster its legitimacy in the face of international condemnation. But if the deal has progressed as Guinean officials have described, it could clash with the tough positions laid out by the junta’s critics, including France and the United States. Many nations condemned the

massacre and swiftly backed away from any agreements with the military government after its soldiers fired upon protesters in a stadium in the capital, Conakry. On Tuesday, a group comprising the European Union, the African Union and the United Nations, among others, called for the junta’s “withdrawal,” and some of Guinea’s neighbors in West Africa have threatened sanctions. For the second straight day, shops, businesses and offices stayed shut in Conakry, as residents observed a call by unions to stay home to protest the killings. There was little traffic, and the city was quiet, residents said. Kallo insisted the deal had been signed with a private company, not the Chinese government, and that it had agreed to invest “up to $7 billion” in electricity and aeronautics infrastructure — an enormous sum for a country whose gross domestic product is only $4.5 billion. Guinea’s capital has

shaky electricity at best and the sprawling country of 10 million, about the size of Oregon, is virtually without internal air links. “How the Chinese are to be compensated hasn’t been decided,” Kallo said. Elsewhere in Africa, China has been fiercely determined in its pursuit of minerals, often absent considerations of how countries are governed, and analysts said an unusual number of Chinese nationals had been observed over recent months at Guinea’s ministry of mines. One expert on Africa-China relations, David H. Shinn, a former ambassador to Ethiopia and Burkina Faso, said “the announcement remains something of an embarrassment to China and plays into its policy of emphasizing state sovereignty and avoiding interference in governance and human rights issues in other countries.”  ADAM NOSSITER

Russian Foreign Minister Rejects Iran Sanctions MOSCOW — Denting President Obama’s hopes for a powerful ally in his campaign to press Iran on its nuclear program, Russia’s foreign minister said Tuesday that threatening Tehran now with harsh new sanctions would be “counterproductive.” The minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, said after meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton here that diplomacy should be given a chance to work, particularly after a meeting in Geneva earlier this month in which the Iranian government said it would allow U.N. inspectors to visit its clandestine nuclear enrichment facility near Qum.

“Threats, sanctions and threats of pressure in the current situation, we are convinced, would be counterproductive,” he said. Three weeks ago, President Dmitri A. Medvedev said that “in some cases, sanctions are inevitable.” This was viewed by some U.S. officials as a sign that Russia was finally coming around to the Obama administration’s view that Iran is best handled with diplomacy backed by a credible threat of sanctions. It also came after the Obama administration announced it would retool a European missile defense system opposed by Russia. That move was thought

to have paid dividends for the White House when Medvedev appeared to throw his support behind Obama on Iran, though U.S. officials say the Russian president was also likely to have been reacting to the disclosure of the nuclear site. After the meeting with Lavrov, Clinton met Medvedev later on Tuesday, and administration officials said he did not retreat from his support in his discussions with her. But he said nothing about Iran publicly before or after the meeting. Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, who has been skeptical of sanctions, was in China on a trade mission.  (NYT)

Congo and Angola Agree to Suspend Mass Expulsions JOHANNESBURG — Tens of thousands of people — some of them wrenched from their homes with only the clothes on their backs — have been expelled from both Angola and Congo in what has been a tit-for-tat immigration dispute. But after weeks of acrimony, both countries on Tuesday agreed to suspend the expulsions, said Congo’s information minister, Lambert Mende.

The expulsions began in Angola, where the government has been annoyed by the many impoverished Congolese who cross the border. Some fled the war in their homeland. Others crossed in search of an economic lift, including those who hope to pluck a fortune in the diamond fields. “We never challenged the expulsions themselves; we challenged the way they were being conducted — all the beating of

people and looting their goods, even sometimes their clothes,” Mende said. “We began our own expulsions as a kind of retaliation.” The largest share of the forcibly returned Angolans came from the province of Bas-Congo. Most of the Congolese expelled from Angola were taken from an area around the city of Soyo or the enclave of Cabinda.  BARRY BEARAK

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in brief Romanian Vote The government of Romania collapsed after a vote of no confidence on Tuesday. The toppling of Prime Minister Emil Boc’s centrist government reinforced the sense of political upheaval in Eastern and Central Europe, where the governments of Hungary, the Czech Republic and Latvia have collapsed in recent months amid economic hard times.  (NYT)

Request for Asylum The Iranian filmmaker Narges Kalhor, daughter of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s adviser on cultural and media affairs, has applied for asylum in Germany, a spokesman for the Nuremberg Human Rights Film Festival said. Kalhor was attending the festival to present her film “Darkhish,” which condemns torture and totalitarianism.  (AP)

Execution Appeal Diplomatic officials and rights groups in Britain are waging a campaign to save the life of Akmal Shaikh, 53, a British man who has been sentenced to death for drug smuggling by a Chinese court despite signs of mental illness. China rarely executes foreigners. Shaikh, who has been sharing a cell with 20 other prisoners in Urumqi, the regional capital of Xinjiang, has one remaining appeal, to the Supreme People’s Court in Beijing.  (NYT)

Mobster’s Funeral With an array of pinstripes, leather coats and facial scars, princes of the Russian underworld gathered on Tuesday to say farewell to a king. Vyacheslav K. Ivankov, a Russian crime boss who survived tangles with the K.G.B., the F.B.I. and violent criminals in a bloody career that spanned decades, was laid to rest at a Moscow cemetery. Ivankov died on Friday in a Moscow hospital from complications stemming from a gunshot wound he received in an apparent assassination attempt in July. He was 69. (NYT)

national

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Still on the Job, but Making Half as Much MECHANICSVILLE, Va. — The captain’s hat with its oakleaf clusters sits atop a bookcase in Bryan Lawlor’s home, out of reach of the children. His uniform still displays the four stripes of a commercial airline captain, but the hat stays home. Rules forbid that extra display of authority, now that Lawlor has been downgraded to first officer. He is now in the co-pilot’s seat in the 50-seat ExpressJet commuter planes he flies, not for any failure in skill. He wears his captain’s stripes to make that point. But with air travel down, his employer cut costs by downgrading 130 captains, those with the lowest seniority, to first officers, automatically cutting the wage of each by roughly 50 percent — to $34,000 in Lawlor’s case. The demotion, the cut in pay to less than his wife, Tracy, makes as a fourth-grade teacher, have diminished Lawlor, in his own eyes. He still thinks he will return

to being the family’s principal breadwinner, although as the months pass he worries more. “I don’t want to be a 50-year-old pilot earning $40,000 a year,” he said. In recent decades, layoffs were the standard way of cutting labor costs. Reducing the wages of those who remained on the job was considered risky: the best workers would jump to another employer. But now pay cuts are occurring more frequently than at any time since the Great Depression. State workers in Georgia are taking home smaller paychecks. So are the tens of thousands of employees in California’s public university system. The steel company Nucor and the technology giant Hewlett-Packard have embraced the practice. So have several airlines and many small businesses. The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not track pay cuts, but it suggests they are reflected in the

steep decline of total weekly pay for production workers, pilots among them, representing 80 percent of the work force. That index has fallen for nine consecutive months, an unprecedented string over the 44 years the bureau has calculated weekly pay. The old record was a two-month decline, during the 1981-1982 recession. “What this means,” said Thomas J. Nardone, an assistant commissioner at the bureau, “is that the amount of money people are paid has taken a big hit; not just those who have lost their jobs, but those who are still employed.” Bryan and Tracy Lawlor, both 34, have hidden their straitened circumstances from their four young children. But as their savings dwindle, Christmas, a key indicator in the Lawlor family, will mean fewer presents this year. “You don’t want to see disappointment on their faces; that makes me feel horrible,” Lawlor said.  LOUIS UCHITELLE

Drawbacks Found in Popular Prostate Surgery Prostate cancer patients who chose minimally invasive surgery, rather than more extensive operations to remove the prostate, reported higher rates of long-term problems, including impotence and incontinence, according to one of the largest studies to compare outcomes to date. Patients achieved similar rates of cancer control regardless of which surgery they had, the analysis found. The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, raises questions about the claims made regarding the superiority of minimally invasive laparoscopic and robotic-

assisted surgeries, which have led to a surge in the popularity of the procedures in recent years. “People intuitively think that a minimally invasive approach has fewer complications, even in the absence of data,” said Dr. Jim. C. Hu, the study’s lead author, who is director of urologic robotic and minimally-invasive surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He added, “I think the technology has been oversold.” Harvard researchers assessed the outcomes of 1,938 men who had minimally invasive prostate surgery and 6,899 men who had open surgery. All the patients were 65 or older.

Men in the study who underwent minimally invasive surgery had shorter hospital stays, fewer respiratory complications and other surgical complications. But they had more complications involving the genital and urinary organs immediately after surgery, with 4.7 percent having those complications, compared with 2.1 percent of the open surgery patients. When researchers looked at complications more than 18 months later, they found that men who had minimally invasive surgery were at greater risk of suffering from incontinence and erectile dysfunction.  (NYT)

Some States Forgo Road Signs on Stimulus Program The Great Depression had its red, white and blue “U.S.A. Work Program” signs and the ubiquitous “We Do Our Part” blue eagle emblems, which can still be seen in the credits of films of the era. This recession has green highway signs telling drivers when construction work was paid for by the stimulus program — but not in Georgia, which just became the latest of at least half a dozen states to forgo the signs as

a waste of money. The signs, which proclaim “Project Funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act” over the red, white, blue and green logo of the stimulus, cost an average of $1,200 apiece in Georgia, said David Spear, the press secretary for the Georgia Department of Transportation. The sign issue became a lightning rod for critics of the stimulus, and many of them complained to the depart-

ment about their cost. “The more we reflected on it, the more we realized they were absolutely right: it’s not the best use of the money,” said Spear, who added that the decision would save money that could be spent on more construction work. The use of signs for stimulus projects was strongly encouraged by the Federal Highway Administration but not required. MICHAEL COOPER

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in brief Sentence Reduced In Spying Case A federal judge in Miami approved a lighter sentence Tuesday for one of five Cubans convicted in 2001 of spying on antiCastro Cuban exiles. In Cuba, the five are considered political prisoners, and the Cuban government has lobbied for their release, arguing that they were not spying on the United States so much as trying to ferret out right-wing anti-Castro terrorists. On Tuesday, Judge Joan A. Lenard replaced the life sentence for one of the men, Antonio Guerrero, with a sentence of 262 months, or almost 22 years, which means he will be out of prison in about seven years, counting time served since his 1998 arrest and time off for good behavior. Guerrero, a U.S. citizen, was convicted of spying while working at the Naval Air Station in Key West.  (NYT)

Lower Minimum When Coloradoans voted to tie the state’s minimum wage to inflation, they were trying to make sure low-wage workers did not fall too far behind the cost of living. But their vote has had an unintended consequence: Colorado plans to lower its minimum wage next year because of falling inflation rates, becoming the first state in the nation do so. The state’s Department of Labor and Employment said it planned to lower the wage to $7.24 from $7.28. The federal minimum is $7.25 an hour, and it is illegal for most businesses in Colorado to pay workers less than that, so virtually all low-wage workers will see a drop of only 3 cents per hour.  (NYT)

Shelter Defies Town Brookville, Pa., which tried to shut down a church-run homeless shelter, has agreed to pay the church $100,000 to settle a civil suit. The First Apostles’ Doctrine Church, which runs the Just for Jesus shelter near the business district, sued the town in November, saying it was infringing on its religious liberty. (NYT)

business

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

DJIA

9,871.06

D 14.74

NASDAQ

2,139.89

U

0.75

Dollar/YEN

89.76 D 0.08

10-yr treasury 3.35% D 0.03

gold (ny) $1,064.30 U 7.20 crude oil

$74.15 U 0.88

E-Mail Shows Concerns Over Merrill Deal It was Jan. 15, and the government was about to hand Bank of America its second taxpayer lifeline as the bank was drowning in losses from its recent marriage to Merrill Lynch. Kenneth D. Lewis, the chairman of Bank of America, and other top executives convened a late afternoon conference call to explain the bank’s latest problems to the board: Not only was the government making the new multibillion dollar bailout on punishing financial terms; Merrill’s losses — already thought to be steep — were far worse than the bleak estimates tallied just several weeks earlier. As Lewis and the other executives continued their briefing, one board member minced no words in his assessment of the situation. “Unfortunately it’s screw the

shareholders!!” Charles K. Gifford wrote to a fellow director in an e-mail exchange that took place during the call. “No trail,” Thomas May, that director, reminded him, an apparent reference to the inadvisability of leaving an e-mail thread of their conversation. The e-mail messages, reviewed by The New York Times, were handed over to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform this week as Bank of America opens a collection of documents that it has kept secret about the ill-fated merger. While the e-mail does not show that the bank deliberately kept vital information on the deal from shareholders, it opens a window onto the concerns harbored by several board members over the Merrill

deal. Shortly after May’s remark about an email trail, Gifford said his comments were made in “the context of a horrible economy!!! Will effect everyone.” “Good comeback,” May replied. A spokesman for the bank declined to comment about the meaning of the e-mail messages. The bank, which resisted investigators’ efforts to identify the executives who failed to disclose Merrill’s losses to shareholders, is now planning to send more documents in the next week to Congress, as well as to the attorney general of New York and the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are all investigating the Merrill merger.  LOUISE STORY  and ERIC DASH

Justices to Hear Appeal by Former Enron Chief WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to hear an appeal from Jeffrey K. Skilling, the former Enron Corp. chief executive who was sent to prison in 2006 for his role in the company’s spectacular collapse. Skilling argued that a law under which he had been convicted was unconstitutionally vague and that he had not received a fair trial in Houston, the city where Enron was based and which bore the brunt of its demise. The law Skilling challenged makes it a crime to “deprive another of the intangible right of honest services.” Federal prosecutors have used

the law to combat public corruption and fraud by corporate officials. The law does not require prosecutors to prove theft of money or property but only that defendants have been disloyal to or dishonest with their constituents or employers. Skilling argued that the court should require that prosecutions of employees of private companies be limited to cases in which defendants had obtained some private gain at the expense of their employers. In his brief asking the Supreme Court to hear his case, Skilling said that his conduct “even if wrongful in some way, was not

the crime of honest-services fraud, because the government conceded that his acts were not intended to advance his own interests instead of Enron’s.” Unless the law is interpreted to require proof of such a private gain by the defendant, Skilling’s brief said, it has the effect of “impermissibly criminalizing whatever wrongful or unethical corporate acts a given prosecutor decides to attack.” In January, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, largely accepted Skilling’s characterization, and vacated his sentence. Skilling has not yet been resentenced.(NYT)

Saudis Seek Compensation If Exports of Oil Fall Saudi Arabia is trying to enlist other oil-producing countries to support a provocative idea: if wealthy countries reduce their oil consumption to combat global warming, they should pay compensation to oil producers. The oil-rich kingdom has pushed this position for years in earlier climate-treaty negotiations. While it has not succeeded, its efforts have sometimes delayed or disrupted discussions. The kingdom is once again gearing up to take a hard line on the is-

sue at international negotiations scheduled for Copenhagen in December. The chief Saudi negotiator, Mohammad al-Sabban, described the position as a “make or break” provision for the Saudis, as nations stake out their stance ahead of the global climate summit scheduled for the end of the year. “Assisting us as oil-exporting countries in achieving economic diversification is very crucial for us through foreign direct investments, technology transfer,

insurance, and funding,” Sabban said in an e-mail message. This Saudi position has emerged periodically as a source of dispute since the earliest global climate talks, in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Petroleum exporters have long used delaying tactics during climate talks. They view any attempt to reduce carbon emissions by developed countries as a menace to their economies.  JAD MOUAWAD  and ANDREW C. REVKIN

nikkei ftse 100

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10,076.56 U 60.17 5,154.15 D 56.02

N.Y.S.E. Most Active Issues Vol. (100s) Last Chg. Citigrp 4225903 BkofAm 1413632 SPDR 1387345 FordM 995997 SprintNex 882727 SPDR Fncl 710531 GenElec 694967 DirFBear rs 661963 Pfizer 641911 iShEMkts 566571

4.83 + 0.06 17.81 – 0.22 107.46 – 0.22 7.62 unch 3.41 – 0.17 15.21 – 0.15 16.39 + 0.06 19.35 + 0.51 16.78 – 0.32 40.25 + 0.07

Nasdaq Actives Vol. (100s)

Bid

Intel 977988 PwShs QQQ 581784 DryShips 544040 ETrade 438177 Cisco 428769 Microsoft 335707 StarentNet 322447 Oracle 268522 Comcast 251300 CentlCom 241380

20.49 42.58 7.22 1.69 23.89 25.81 33.91 20.91 15.36 8.39

Amex Actives Vol. (100s) Last Sinovac Oilsands g EldorGld g NovaGld g CelSci US Gold GoldStr g Rentech NwGold g GranTrra g NthgtM g

92644 68291 56970 53233 33312 31410 30023 28138 22810 21703 20009

8.29 1.40 12.31 6.02 1.39 3.47 3.58 1.68 4.46 4.62 2.81

Chg. + + + + + + + + + +

0.09 0.01 0.45 0.02 0.11 0.09 4.88 0.19 0.08 0.41

Chg. + + + + + + + + + + +

0.81 0.02 0.24 0.41 0.01 0.33 0.05 0.05 0.04 0.31 0.04

Foreign Exchange Fgn. currency Dollars in in dollars fgn.currency Tue. Mon. Tue. Mon. Australia .9029 .9062 Bahrain 2.6525 2.6525 Brazil .5754 .5750 Britain 1.5835 1.6067 Canada .9578 .9510 China .1465 .1465 Denmark .1976 .1985 Dominican .0277 .0277 Egypt .1822 .1824 Europe 1.4709 1.4778 Hong Kong .1290 .1290 Japan .01113 .01129 Mexico .07539 .07531 Norway .1769 .1772 Singapore .7162 .7198 So. Africa .1354 .1366 So. Korea .00085 .00085 Sweden .1425 .1434 Switzerlnd .9688 .9735

1.1075 1.1035 .3770 .3770 1.7380 1.7390 .6315 .6224 1.0441 1.0516 6.8266 6.8275 5.0607 5.0378 36.10 36.10 5.4875 5.4829 .6798 .6767 7.7500 7.7501 89.84 88.52 13.264 13.277 5.6515 5.6440 1.3962 1.3893 7.3875 7.3199 1163.5 1166.3 7.0175 6.9735 1.0322 1.0272

CIT Chief Will Resign The CIT Group, the business lender, said Tuesday that its chairman and chief executive, Jeffrey M. Peek, would resign at the end of the year. Devastated by the downturn in the credit markets, CIT has been trying to avoid bankruptcy for months as it restructures its operations. The company said that a search committee is forming to find a successor . (AP)

Business

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Slump Strengthens China’s Export Presence SHANGHAI — With the global recession making consumers and businesses more price-conscious, China is grabbing market share from its export competitors, solidifying a dominance in world trade that many economists say could last long after any economic recovery. China’s exports this year have already vaulted it past Germany to become the world’s biggest exporter. Now, those market share gains are threatening to increase trade frictions with the United States and Europe. China is winning a larger piece of a shrinking pie. Although world trade declined this year because of the recession, consumers are demanding lower-priced goods and Beijing, determined to keep its export machine humming, is finding a way to deliver. The country’s factories are aggressively reducing prices —

allowing China to gain ground in old markets and make inroads in new ones. The most striking gains have come in the United States, where China has displaced Canada this year as the largest supplier of imports. In the first seven months of 2008, just under 15 percent of American imports came from China. Over the same period this year, 19 percent did. Meanwhile, Canada’s share of American imports fell to 14.5 percent, from nearly 17 percent. Besides increasing its share of many American markets, China is increasing the value of exports in absolute terms in some categories. In knit apparel, for instance, American imports from China jumped 10 percent through July of this year — while America’s imports from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador

plunged 19 to 24 percent in each country, according to Global Trade Information Services. A similar tale is told around the world, from Japan to Italy. One reason is the ability of Chinese manufacturers to quickly slash prices by reducing wages and other costs in production zones that often rely on migrant workers. Factory managers here say American buyers are demanding they do just that. “The buyers are getting more and more tough in bargaining for lower prices, especially American buyers,” says Liao Yuan, the head of international trade at the Changrun Garment Company, which is based in southern China and exports jeans to Europe and the United States. “They offer $2.85 per pair of jeans for a package of a dozen, when the reasonable price is $7.”  DAVID BARBOZA

Some Still Hope to Sell Music by the Month SAN FRANCISCO — The idea of selling monthly subscriptions to a vast catalog of online music has met with only limited success. That isn’t stopping a new batch of entrepreneurs from trying to make it work. The latest and perhaps most surprising entrants to the field are the European entrepreneurs Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. In 2001, they created and financed Kazaa, one of the original peer-to-peer file sharing services that hurt the music industry. The two have created and financed a secretive startup called Rdio,

with offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Rdio and similar startups are reinventing a concept pioneered earlier this decade by Rhapsody, a service majority owned by RealNetworks, and the tamed version of Napster, now owned by Best Buy. A few hundred thousand Rhapsody and Napster subscribers pay monthly fees of around $15 for the right to stream an unlimited number of songs, at any time, from their PCs and mobile devices. But with modest membership growth at best, neither service

has managed to challenge iTunes, with its many millions of users — or enticed music lovers from pirating music. But as CD sales continue to plummet, and the music industry searches for a profitable future, entrepreneurs with various approaches believe they can finally make music subscriptions work. Rdio is hoping to introduce a music subscription service by early next year that offers seamless access to music from both PCs and cellphones. The big challenge will be to get licenses from the major music labels. BRAD STONE

5

in brief Ford and Union Deal DETROIT — The United Automobile Workers union is asking 41,000 members who work at the Ford Motor Co. to approve a tentative deal that gives the automaker some of the same concessions that General Motors and Chrysler already received. The deal, announced Tuesday by Ford and the union, contains a six-year freeze on wages for newly hired workers, combines some job classifications and limits the union’s ability to strike. In return, workers would get a $1,000 bonus next year and Ford would make future product commitments at five assembly plants. (NYT)

Cisco Buys Starent Cisco Systems on Tuesday announced that it would pay $35 a share, or $2.9 billion, for Starent Networks, which makes products that help wireless telecommunications companies ship large volumes of data to phones and computing devices. The deal represents about a 20 percent premium over Starent’s closing price on Monday of $29.03 a share.  (NYT)

Europe Shoe Duties BRUSSELS — The European Union’s executive is proposing to extend antidumping duties on shoes imported from China and Vietnam for a minimum of 15 months, a compromise that aims to satisfy shoemakers and retailers alike in Europe. (NYT)

For Safety’s Sake, Hybrid Cars May Include Some Artificial Vroom For decades, automakers have been on a quest to make cars quieter: an auto that purrs, and glides almost silently in traffic. They have finally succeeded. Plug-in hybrid and electric cars, it turns out, not only reduce air pollution, they cut noise pollution as well with their whisper-quiet motors. But that has created a different problem. They aren’t noisy enough. So safety experts, worried that hybrids pose a threat if pedestrians, children and others can’t hear them approaching, want automakers to supply some digital-

ly enhanced vroom. Indeed, just as cellphones have ring tones, “car tones” may not be far behind — an option for owners of electric vehicles to choose the sound their cars emit. Working with Hollywood special-effects wizards, some hybrid auto companies have started tinkering in sound studios, rather than machine shops, to customize engine noises. The Fisker Karma, an $87,900 plug-in hybrid expected to go on sale next year, will emit a sound — pumped out of speakers in the bumpers — that the company founder, Henrik Fisker, de-

scribes as “a cross between a starship and a Formula One car.” Nissan is also consulting with the film industry on sounds that could be emitted by its forthcoming Leaf battery-electric vehicle, while Toyota has been working with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the National Federation of the Blind and the Society of Automotive Engineers on sounds for electric vehicles. The notion that battery E.V.’s and plug-in hybrids might be too quiet has gained backing in Congress, among federal regulators

and on the Internet. The Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act of 2009, introduced early this year, would require a federal safety standard to protect pedestrians from ultra-quiet cars. Paul Scott, vice president of the advocacy group Plug In America, said he would prefer giving drivers control over whether the motor makes noise, unlike, say, the Fisker Karma, which will make its warning noise automatically. “Quiet cars need to stay quiet — we worked so hard to make them that way,” he said.  JIM MOTAVALLI

journal

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

6

Exiled From School, H.I.V.-Infected Orphans Learn a Bitter Lesson AN NHON TAY, Vietnam — The first day of school was a special one last month for the 15 children from the Mai Hoa orphanage here. They are infected with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, and for the first time they would be allowed to attend the local primary school. “The children were so excited,” said Sister Nguyen Thi Bao, who runs the orphanage and had been lobbying for three years to enroll them in the government school. “They had been wishing for this day to come.” But when they arrived, they found an uprising by the parents of the other students, who refused to let their children enter the

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Hazardous Tease mercilessly, with “on” 61 Sign up 62 “___ inside” (slogan) 63 Sculpting medium 64 Desolate 65 Plow man 66 In accordance with 67 Fillers of library shelves 60

DOWN 1 Duds 2 Banned apple spray 3 Dress not for the self-conscious 4 Butcher’s stock 5 Non-pro? 6 Bathes 7 Standard of perfection 8 Passion 9 Became engaged

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Subject of some tables 31 Cook’s wear 32 “Now I get it!” 33 Essence of a person, one might say 36 What this puzzle’s four missing clues spell, in order 41 Slalom section 42 “Frasier” role 30

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ACROSS 1 Gallows-shaped letter 6 1975 musical with the song “Believe in Yourself,” with “The” 9 Perle who inspired “Call Me Madam” 14 Not native 15 Stand buy 16 Sing the praises of 17 Attacked 18 The Caribbean, for one 19 Alternative to Rover or Rex 23

school together with the infected orphans. Some of the parents hastily backed away when the orphans walked past. After a short standoff, the principal, who had agreed to accept the orphans, told Bao that their papers were not in order and that they could not stay. The children returned to the orphanage, just a short walk down a country road, where they continue to study in small classrooms, still exiled from the uninfected world. “I was so happy to go to the school,” said a 12-year-old fourth-grader for whom Bao insisted on anonymity to keep her from the spotlight. “But then I saw that some parents

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Blow the whistle on 11 Thickset 12 Trunk 13 Shorten the sleeves on, e.g. 21 Get an eyeful 22 Univac’s predecessor 25 Massachusetts getaway, with “the” 26 Piece of music 27 Scepter toppers 28 “My mama done ___ me” 29 Italian diminutive ending 30 Tue. plus two 10

Wood-smoothing tool 33 Founder and first queen of Carthage 34 Reply to the Little Red Hen 35 In a bit 37 Arrestable offense 38 Endless years 39 What summers do 40 Nervous mannerism 44 Sarah Jessica of “Sex and the City” 45 Tartan pattern 32

Wild ass 47 Paper size: Abbr. 48 Biting 49 Perform very well 50 Coffee grounds and orange peels, typically 51 On the double 53 Tap trouble 54 Dry run 55 Sondheim’s “___ the Woods” 56 Fill by force 57 Washington chopping down the cherry tree, e.g. 58 Part of B.P.O.E. 46

For answers, call 1-900-289-CLUE (289-2583), $1.49 a minute; or, with a credit card, 1-800-814-5550. Online subscriptions: Today’s puzzle and more than 5,000 past puzzles, nytimes.com/crosswords ($39.95 a year). Mobile crosswords: nytimes.com/mxword. Annual subscriptions are available for the best of Sunday crosswords from the last 50 years: 1-888-7-ACROSS. Read about and comment on each puzzle: nytimes.com/wordplay.

wouldn’t let their children go to school with me because they are scared of my disease.” The girl said she understood their reaction. “If I were a normal child, I would be afraid, too, because I wouldn’t understand,” she said. “I would feel the same way. But I wouldn’t have acted the way they did.” Bao and officials of the district and the school, the An Nhon Dong Elementary School, have met with the parents since then, but they remain adamant. “I don’t want my child to be with the AIDS children,” Nguyen Thi Thuy, 36, said the other day as she brought her 8-year-old son to school. “He could be injured, and it’s easy to transmit the disease through blood. And once you’re sick, it’s difficult to become a normal person again.” One after another, parents who arrived with their children on small motorbikes raised their voices in agreement. If the orphans came back, said a man who gave his name only as Tam, he would pull his 6-year old son out again. The story is not surprising, said Eamonn Murphy, country director in Vietnam for Unaids, the United Nations’ AIDS-fighting agency. “You go to any rural environment in Asia, and you are going to have similar reactions,” he said. “The general lack of understanding leads to this inappropriate reaction and fear.” Most of the parents here are farmers with little education, but the prejudice seemed to extend to city folk as well. About 290,000 people in Vietnam, a country of 86 million, carry H.I.V. today, and the government estimates that 5,100 are children. Although the law requires equal treatment, almost none of them have been accepted in schools because of the fears of other children’s parents, Nguyen Vinh Hien, the deputy minister of education, said last month. He said the ministry would try to enroll at least half of these children in government schools by next year, but the experience of the Mai Hoa orphans suggests that this will not be easy. SETH MYDANS

620 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10018 • Tom Brady, Editor e-mail: [email protected] • TimesDigest Sales Office phone: (212) 556-1200 fax: (646) 461-2364 e-mail: [email protected] • For advertising information and to request a media kit contact InMotion Media: phone: (212) 706-2700 e-mail: [email protected]

opinion

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

editorials of the timeS

thomas l. friedman

That Promised Financial Reform

Not Good Enough

Pretty much everyone agrees on the causes for the country’s financial mess: predatory lenders, weak regulation and risky financial instruments. Congress’s willingness to address those problems will have its first real test on Wednesday when the House Financial Services Committee puts finishing touches on what could be essential reform legislation — or a major disappointment, depending on what they do. At the top of the committee’s agenda is regulation of the dangerously opaque multitrillion-dollar derivatives’ market. Next on the agenda is the creation of a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency to oversee the consumer-credit offerings of banks and other financial firms — including mortgages, credit cards and overdraft “protection.” Both reforms are crucial, and both are in danger of being irreparably weakened. Derivatives are supposed to help investors and businesses manage risk, but their unchecked and unregulated use led to the financial crash. Congress should require that all of the dealers and users of derivatives — including banks, hedge funds and corporations — conduct their trades on exchanges where they would be subject to regulation and public scrutiny. Regulators could create exceptions for customized contracts that are negotiated one-on-one for truly complex and unique circumstances. But most derivatives contracts are highly standardized and can be, and should be, exchange-traded.

Unfortunately, the proposed legislation has too many loopholes and exemptions. Many corporations and hedge funds would still be able to trade standardized derivatives privately. That may protect bank profits — without transparency, there is no chance for comparison shopping — but it would put taxpayers at risk of a repeat calamity. Like the banks, some corporate investors in derivatives resist exchange trading. They argue that more regulation would raise their transaction costs. That’s debatable, but even if true, somewhat higher costs would be a small price to pay for stability. The threats to the consumer protection agency are even more blatant. To curry favor with the banks, several lawmakers are intent on amending the legislation so that no state could impose its own consumer protection laws on banks. That would be a mistake because many states have demonstrated the will and the expertise to protect consumers. But federal rules were issued in 2004 that basically barred states from enforcing their laws over national banks. That short-circuited state efforts to control, among other things, the subprime lending that sparked the crisis. Some lawmakers are also intent on weakening the proposed power of the new agency to examine the books of the firms that it would regulate. Routine inspection of an institution’s books is essential to understanding the institution’s products and practices. Without such knowledge, consumer protection would be compromised.

One Protection for Prisoners The practice of keeping female prisoners in shackles while they give birth is barbaric. But it remains legal in more than 40 states, and prisoners’ rights advocates say it is all too common. A federal appeals court has now found that the shackling of an Arkansas inmate may have violated the Constitution — but the margin was uncomfortably close. Shawanna Nelson, a nonviolent offender, was 29 years old and six months pregnant when she arrived in Arkansas’s McPherson Unit prison in 2003. When she went into labor, she was taken to a civilian hospital. Although there was no reason to consider her a flight risk, her legs were shackled to a wheelchair, and then, while she went through labor, to the sides of a hospital bed. Nelson testified that the shackles prevented her from moving her legs, stretching or changing positions during the most painful part of her labor. She offered evidence that the shackling had caused a permanent hip injury, torn stomach muscles, an umbilical hernia that required an operation and extreme mental anguish. In a suit against prison officials, Nelson charged that her Eighth Amendment right to

be free of cruel and unusual punishment had been violated. She won an early ruling from the trial court, but a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit rejected her suit. Now, the full appeals court has reversed that decision, ruling with a 6-to5 vote, that a jury could find that Nelson’s shackling was unconstitutional. The court relied in part on a 2002 Supreme Court holding that Alabama’s practice of tying prisoners to a hitching post violated the Eighth Amendment. The ruling should help persuade other courts and state legislatures that the shackling of pregnant prisoners is unconstitutional. Several states have already made the practice illegal under certain circumstances — including New York, which did so this year. Elizabeth Alexander, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s prison project, called the circuit court’s ruling “thrilling,” given how conservative the federal courts have been on prison issues. It is clearly an important victory. Sadly, it is also a sign of how low the bar has been set for the humane treatment of prisoners.

7

BERLIN — If President Obama can find a way to balance the precise number of troops that will stabilize Afghanistan and Pakistan, without tipping America into a Vietnam there, then he indeed deserves a Nobel Prize — for physics. For my money, though, I wish there was less talk today about how many more troops to send and more focus on what kind of Afghan government we have as our partner. Election monitors suggest that as many as one-third of votes cast in the Aug. 20 election are tainted and that President Hamid Karzai apparently engaged in massive fraud to come out on top. Yet, he is supposed to be the bridge between our troop surge and our goal of a stable Afghanistan. No way. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who is asking for thousands more troops, is not wrong when he says a lot of bad things would flow from losing Afghanistan to the Taliban. But I keep asking myself: How do we succeed with such a tainted government as our partner? I know that Jefferson was not on the ballot. But there is a huge difference between “good enough” and dysfunctional and corrupt. There are way too many Afghans who think our partner, Karzai and his team, are downright awful. I am not sure Washington fully understands just how much the Taliban-led insurgency is increasingly an insurrection against the behavior of the Karzai government. Too many Afghan people now blame us for installing and maintaining this government. The Karzai government has a lot in common with a Mafia family. Where a “normal” government raises revenues from the people — in the form of taxes — and then disperses them to its local and regional institutions in the form of budgetary allocations or patronage, this Afghan government operates in the reverse. The money flows upward from the countryside in the form of payments for offices purchased or “gifts” from cronies. What flows from Kabul, the experts say, is permission for unfettered extraction, protection in case of prosecution and punishment in case the official opposes the system or gets out of line. We have to be careful that we are not seen as the enforcers for this system. While visiting Afghanistan last July, I met a provincial governor who every U.S. official told me was the best and most honest in Afghanistan — and then, they added, “We have to fight Karzai every day to keep him from being fired.” That is what happens to those who buck the Karzai system. This is crazy. We have been way too polite, and too worried about looking like a colonial power, in dealing with Karzai. I would not add a single soldier there before this guy takes visible steps to clean up his government in ways that would be respected by the people. We can’t want a more decent Afghanistan than the country’s own president.

sports

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Barring Rain, Yanks Consider 3-Man Rotation There was baseball at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday, pitchers facing hitters in the sunshine as the Yankees stayed sharp for Game 1 of the American League Championship Series against the Los Angeles Angels on Friday. But Joe Girardi, the manager with a usually sunny outlook, saw clouds. In a conference call, Girardi said the Yankees might use only three starters in the A.L.C.S., meaning the Game 1 starter C.C. Sabathia could work Game 4 on three days’ rest. But if one of the first two games is rained out, it could scramble the plan. “You go into a series with a plan in mind,” Girardi said. “Obviously, weather can always change a lot of different things, depending on how we are this weekend, Friday and Saturday. In the 10-day forecast I looked at, it looks like

we have some rain in the forecast, so that could change things. But we are definitely considering possibly going to a three-man rotation in this round.” As it stands, Game 1 is scheduled to start Friday at 7:57 p.m., with Game 2 slated to start Saturday at the same time. The teams are off Sunday before Games 3 and 4 at Angel Stadium on Monday and Tuesday. Then the series pauses again for a day before resuming in a possible fifth game next Thursday. If the games are played as scheduled, Sabathia could start Game 4 on three days’ rest and come back for a possible Game 7 on four days’ rest. No pitcher has started three games in a postseason series since Arizona’s Curt Schilling against the Yankees in the 2001 World Series, but Sabathia seems capable.

Sabathia worked 253 innings in 2008, when he made his final four starts on short rest, including a playoff loss for Milwaukee. With 230 innings this season and a long rest before Game 1, Sabathia would seem to be ready for an extra start in the A.L.C.S. “We talked about the importance of trying to win Game 3 so we could set up our rotation the way we wanted to, and not getting him to 250 innings during the regular season allows us to consider that,” Girardi said. The weather may dictate otherwise. With showers in the forecast for Friday and Saturday — as well as Sunday’s day off — one of the first two games could be rained out. The teams could conceivably lose the day off between Games 2 and 3, forcing the Yankees to use a fourth starter for Game 4.  TYLER KEPNER

Goodell Objects to Limbaugh’s Ownership Bid BOSTON — Commissioner Roger Goodell cast doubt on Rush Limbaugh’s viability as an N.F.L. owner Tuesday, saying that “divisive comments are not what the N.F.L. is all about.” “I’ve said many times before, we’re all held to a high standard here,” Goodell said. “I would not want to see those comments coming from people who are in a responsible position in the N.F.L. — absolutely not.” Goodell emphasized that it was extremely early in the process and that the Rosenbloom family, which owns the St. Louis Rams, is not even fully committed to sell its

majority stake in the team. Limbaugh has teamed with Dave Checketts, a former Madison Square Garden executive, in a bid to buy into the Rams. But Goodell’s comments were a thinly-veiled signal that Limbaugh’s bid — even if it were the highest — would most likely not receive support from owners. Three-quarters of the 32 owners must approve a sale, meaning just nine of them can scuttle a deal. Goodell, who presides over a league whose players are 65 percent black, took the extraordinary step of addressing an ownership bid early because a brushfire had

WEATHER

High/low temperatures for the 20 hours ended at 4 p.m. yesterday, Eastern time, and precipitation (in inches) for the 18 hours ended at 2 p.m. yesterday. Expected conditions for today and tomorrow. Weather conditions: C-clouds, F-fog, H-haze, I-ice, PCpartly cloudy,R-rain, S-sun, Sh-showers, Sn-snow, SSsnow showers, T-thunderstorms, Tr-trace, W-windy.

U.S. CITIES Yesterday Today Tomorrow Atlanta 73/ 57 0 60/ 59 Sh 66/ 50 C Albuquerque 74/ 59 0 76/ 52 S 77/ 51 S Boise 65/ 41 0 64/ 49 C 65/ 48 PC Boston 53/ 46 0.31 51/ 38 S 49/ 36 C Buffalo 50/ 42 0 45/ 32 PC 44/ 29 PC Charlotte 76/ 46 0 52/ 50 R 55/ 45 C Chicago 47/ 34 0.02 48/ 38 C 47/ 40 Sh Cleveland 52/ 48 0 48/ 37 C 48/ 37 C Dallas-Ft. Worth 69/ 63 0.25 84/ 67 C 75/ 66 PC Denver 52/ 34 0 62/ 36 PC 64/ 37 S Detroit 50/ 43 0 48/ 37 C 49/ 38 C

Houston Kansas City Los Angeles Miami Mpls.-St. Paul New York City Orlando Philadelphia Phoenix Salt Lake City San Francisco Seattle St. Louis Washington

85/ 73 46/ 41 69/ 61 91/ 80 39/ 26 64/ 50 92/ 73 68/ 46 82/ 66 66/ 51 65/ 59 57/ 46 51/ 44 73/ 50

0.04 0 0.03 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.05 1.70 0 0 0

sprung up last week when Limbaugh’s interest in the Rams became public. Since then, retired and current players, who generally have little to say about ownership transactions, have voiced concern about Limbaugh’s interest in the Rams, with some saying players would not play for him. One of Limbaugh’s most controversial quotes came in 2003 while he was employed by ESPN. He suggested that Donovan McNabb got credit for the Eagles’ successes because the news media wanted him to succeed because he is a black quarterback. (NYT) 91/ 74 PC 46/ 40 C 68/ 61 Sh 91/ 79 S 44/ 35 C 54/ 44 S 90/ 71 PC 56/ 41 PC 88/ 66 S 60/ 49 R 70/ 59 Sh 59/ 48 R 50/ 43 C 54/ 45 PC

91/ 75 PC 48/ 42 C 80/ 59 S 92/ 77 PC 44/ 36 Sh 51/ 42 C 88/ 73 T 52/ 42 R 95/ 68 S 65/ 44 PC 71/ 58 C 60/ 49 Sh 49/ 43 Sh 49/ 44 R

FOREIGN CITIES Acapulco Athens Beijing Berlin Buenos Aires Cairo

Yesterday Today Tomorrow 94/ 79 0 88/ 75 PC 88/ 75 Sh 76/ 72 0 73/ 54 S 73/ 55 Sh 74/ 54 Tr 68/ 54 S 70/ 54 PC 49/ 36 0.16 45/ 36 C 43/ 36 R 78/ 57 0 63/ 48 Sh 64/ 46 PC 87/ 72 0 90/ 73 C 97/ 79 PC

Cape Town Dublin Geneva Hong Kong Kingston Lima London Madrid Mexico City Montreal Moscow Nassau Paris Prague Rio de Janeiro Rome Santiago Stockholm Sydney Tokyo Toronto Vancouver Warsaw

8

in brief Player in Car Crash ARLINGTON, Va. — Charlie Davies, a 23-year-old forward for the U.S. men’s national team, was in serious but stable condition on Tuesday after sustaining several broken bones and a lacerated bladder in a one-vehicle accident in which another person was killed. Davies underwent several hours of surgery at Washington Hospital Center after a car he was riding in struck a metal guardrail on the George Washington Memorial Parkway around 3:15 a.m. (AP)

Patriots Sign Seau Junior Seau, 40, is back with the New England Patriots, coming out of retirement a third time to sign a contract Tuesday for a 20th season. The signing of Seau, a 12-time Pro Bowl linebacker, was announced by Versus, the television network on which he has a show.  (AP)

Top Skier Retires Hermann Maier, the Austrian star, announced his retirement at 36, ending one of the most successful careers in Alpine skiing. Maier’s nearly 14year career included 2 Olympic gold medals, 3 world titles and 4 overall World Cup crowns.(AP)

NHL scores MONDAY’S LATE GAMES Phoenix 1, San Jose 0, SO TUESDAY Buffalo 6, Detroit 2 Columbus 2, Calgary 1 Colorado 4, Toronto 1 77/ 52 0.12 59/ 41 0 56/ 45 0 89/ 79 Tr 90/ 79 0.01 71/ 61 0 62/ 41 0 78/ 50 0 73/ 57 1.30 44/ 37 0.18 55/ 41 0.30 91/ 79 Tr 60/ 41 0 45/ 37 0.24 82/ 72 0.12 67/ 48 0.08 60/ 45 0 41/ 36 – 78/ 63 0 77/ 63 Tr 51/ 39 0.01 51/ 45 0 44/ 40 0.12

66/ 56 PC 61/ 45 PC 50/ 36 S 86/ 75 R 88/ 79 S 68/ 61 C 64/ 46 PC 73/ 54 S 79/ 52 PC 41/ 28 C 61/ 52 PC 93/ 79 S 57/ 41 S 43/ 37 Sh 84/ 68 PC 68/ 48 PC 65/ 43 PC 46/ 36 PC 68/ 55 PC 70/ 57 PC 45/ 30 PC 55/ 46 R 36/ 32 Sn

61/ 54 R 57/ 45 PC 46/ 32 S 84/ 73 PC 90/ 77 S 68/ 57 C 63/ 46 PC 68/ 48 S 81/ 52 PC 43/ 25 PC 54/ 41 PC 93/ 79 PC 55/ 37 S 39/ 36 Sn 93/ 70 C 66/ 52 S 68/ 43 PC 50/ 36 PC 73/ 54 PC 70/ 55 S 45/ 32 C 57/ 48 Sh 36/ 32 C

sports journal

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

An Old Reliable at the Old Ball Game The way baseball stadium menus have changed in recent years, an updated verse of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” might include the lyric, “Buy me some sushi and lobster rolls,” rather than peanuts and Cracker Jack. Since 1908, the iconic Cracker Jack brand has been helpfully promoted by the song, a mainstay of the seventh-inning stretch. But ballpark food options are vastly different than they were even a decade or two ago. Baseball fans can buy Rocky Mountain oysters (bull testicles) in Denver, crab cakes in Baltimore, cheese steaks in Philadelphia and fish tacos in San Diego. It can be harder to name what food and beverages cannot be found at the ballpark than to name what can. All that would seem to threaten Cracker Jack’s vaunted culinary place in baseball culture. Yet concession managers consider it a do-not-disturb item amid an ever-changing menu. The caramel corn with a prize inside survives, even flourishes. “It does still have relevance,” said Kevin Haggerty, who oversees concessions at Fenway Park in Boston, where more than 1,000 bags (no longer boxes) of Cracker Jack are sold in a typical game.

“It’s part of the ballpark experience. It is still a good snack. It sells well. It holds its place in the sales mix. And it’s in the song.” Long a staple of a ballpark’s barebones selection — a traditional list including hot dogs, peanuts and soda — Cracker Jack has withstood the rapid expansion of items offered, including recent trends toward local delicacies and healthier fare. Aramark, the company that runs concessions at 13 major league ballparks, including Fenway Park, says that overall foodconcession sales are on the rise. Cracker Jack, according to several concession managers, is as reliably consistent as anything on the menu. In Philadelphia, Cracker Jack sales have been remarkably constant for more than 20 years, said Nick Brigandi, a financial analyst who serves as the vending manager for Citizens Bank Park hawkers, the roaming people who sell concessions from the aisles. From 500 to 600 bags of Cracker Jack are sold at a typical Phillies game. Cracker Jack, sold in 2.75-ounce bags for about $4, is an impulse buy, Brigandi said. It is not affected by the sales of items considered more of a meal, like hot

dogs and personal pizzas. “Nobody is going to buy Cracker Jack because it’s their main item,” Brigandi said. “Your soda buyer is going to buy Cracker Jack. Your beer buyer is going to buy peanuts.” Cracker Jack has even withstood the Yankees. In 2004, they swapped Cracker Jack for another caramel corn, Crunch ’n Munch. Fans rebelled, using a double-barreled argument of ballpark tradition and the seventhinning lyrics. Two months later, Cracker Jack was back. Cracker Jack was invented in the late 1800s when the brothers Louis and F.W. Rueckheim mixed popcorn and peanuts with molasses. A salesman, the story goes, took a bite in 1896 and said, “That’s crackerjack!” A brand was born. (The name is singular, never the plural Cracker Jacks, although many concession price boards and some hawkers stick an “s” at the end.) Cracker Jack’s continuing success has much to do with tradition, part of the lure of baseball, too. “It’s usually the kids who want it,” said Greg Copeland, a Fenway Park hawker carrying a bag of Cracker Jack on a recent night. “A lot of people get it to give to their kids.” JOHN BRANCH

9

AP Top 25 The Top 25 teams in The Associated Press college football poll, with firstplace votes in parentheses, records through Sept. 26 and previous ranking:

Record 1. Florida (55) 2. Texas (1) 3. Alabama (4) 4. LSU 5. Boise St. 6. Virginia Tech 7. Southern Cal 8. Oklahoma 9. Ohio St. 10. Cincinnati 11. TCU 12. Houston 13. Iowa 14. Oklahoma St. 15. Penn St. 16. Oregon 17. Miami 18. Georgia 18. Kansas 20. BYU 21. Mississippi 22. Michigan 23. Nebraska 24. California 25. Georgia Tech

Pvs 4-0 4-0 4-0 4-0 4-0 3-1 3-1 2-1 3-1 4-0 3-0 3-0 4-0 3-1 3-1 3-1 2-1 3-1 4-0 3-1 2-1 4-0 3-1 3-1 3-1

1 2 3 7 8 11 12 10 13 14 15 17 — 16 5 — 9 21 20 19 4 23 25 6 —

Others receiving votes:

Missouri 175, Auburn 171, South Carolina 154, South Florida 145, UCLA 41, Utah 25, Wisconsin 20, Notre Dame 7, Arizona St. 4, North Carolina 2, Stanford 2.

After Loss, Angry Jets Wag Fingers at the Mirror

Despite Firings, Offenses Struggle

A day after the Jets blew three fourth-quarter leads against the Miami Dolphins on national television, Kris Jenkins, nose tackle and defensive leader, broke his silence. Jenkins, who declined to speak with reporters after the Jets’ 31-27 loss on Monday night, was still frustrated, angry and embarrassed. “Now, the philosophy has to change,” Jenkins said Tuesday in an interview. “With all our talents, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with talking a little trash. But you have to back it up. We have a coach I love. He is going to demand a challenge. Players have to understand what that means and play up to that level. “If not, it’s going to be a long season,’’ Jenkins added. “Because basically, every week we’re picking a fight.” Jenkins said Coach Rex Ryan “ripped everybody” before the team flew home to New Jersey,

N.F.L. coaches are copycats by nature. But it may be a long time before someone copies the trend that swept training camp this summer: firing the offensive coordinator on the eve of the season. The three teams that did it — the Buffalo Bills, the Kansas City Chiefs and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers — are a combined 1-14. The Bills’ Dick Jauron appears to have the least job security of the three. Buffalo’s no-huddle system has created more confusion than points. Changing coordinators was not enough for Tampa Bay’s Raheem Morris; he has already changed quarterbacks. But the Chiefs’ Todd Haley may have the most problems. In addition to the league’s 30th-ranked offense, he has the league’s worst defense — the only one allowing more than 400 yards a game.  (NYT)

landing around 5 a.m. Ryan told reporters Tuesday in a conference call that he did not sleep. Instead, he watched game film that was more horror movie before turning his attention to Buffalo, the Jets’ opponent Sunday. Ryan labeled his team’s practice tempo last week “horrible,” and Jenkins agreed with the assessment. Jenkins, 30, banished thoughts of retirement this offseason by surveying the talent that surrounded him and thinking the Jets could win a Super Bowl this season. He does not care, he said, if teammates talk less trash or more. “But the level of play has to definitely increase,” said Jenkins, who had three tackles. “I mean me, everybody. Regardless of what our record says, that game was horrible. The defense just played horrible. It’s hard to take that, as a man.” The Dolphins played their own

role in the Jets’ demise. Coach Tony Sparano and the offensive coordinator Dan Henning played master strategists, running bootlegs, fake bootlegs, three-step drops, seven-step drops, wide receiver screens, running back screens, and sets with anywhere from no receivers to four. The Dolphins stymied the Jets’ pass rush by using maximum protection — two tight ends, two running backs and a receiver — to eliminate pass-rushing lanes. They sent running backs Ronnie Brown and Ricky Williams right at the defense, daring it to stop the run — and then ran for 151 yards. Along with three leads, the Jets also squandered a chance to take sole possession of first place in the American Football Conference East, along with a three-game lead on the Dolphins. Instead, they were left with a short week and an experience Ryan called humbling. GREG BISHOP